They were choking with laughter, suffocating with it; it twisted the bodies of these men, bent them double, shook them, and it rumbled through the air, powerful, carefree, growing louder and louder until it reached the pitch of hysteria. From the windows of the women’s wing of the prison peered smiling faces, framed in white kerchiefs. The guard, backed against the wall, thrust out his bulging middle, and clasping it with both hands, let out volleys of thick, low-pitched laughter that fairly choked him.

The laughter scattered the men in all directions. Cutting astounding capers, Notch did a squatting jig, singing by way of accompaniment:

“Enough, devil take you!” groaned the man with the flaming beard.

But Notch was in high feather. Around him rioted the wild laughter of these men in gray, and Notch knew that it was he, and he alone, who was making them laugh.

His awareness of this was evident in every gesture of his, in every grimace of his mobile, clownish face, and his whole body twitched with the joy of his triumph. Now he held the kitten by the head, and shaking the excess paint from its coat, he went on dancing and improvising with the ecstasy of an artist conscious of his victory over the crowd:

Everything laughed around the crowd of prisoners, possessed by insane gaiety; the sun laughed on the windowpanes through the grating; the blue sky smiled above the prison-yard, and even its old, dirty walls seemed to be smiling with the smile of one who must suppress his gaiety, no matter how it may riot within him. From behind the gratings of the windows in the women’s wing, women’s faces peered down into the yard; they too laughed and their teeth sparkled in the sun. Everything was reborn, as it were, having shaken off the dull grayness that weighed one down with ennui and dejection; everything came alive, suffused with this purifying laughter which, like the sun, makes even dirt seem more decent.

Having set the green kitten on the grass, little islands of which, springing up between the stones, gave a motley look to the prison-yard, Notch, excited, out of breath, and sweating, continued to perform his wild jig.

But the laughter was already dying down. There had been too much of it, and it was beginning to tire people. Some were still shrieking hysterically; some continued laughing, but not so steadily. Finally a moment came when all were silent, except Notch, who was still singing a dancetune, and the kitten, which, crawling on the grass, was mewing softly and plaintively. It was almost indistinguishable from the grass in color, and the paint must have blinded it and interfered with its movements; the sticky, big- headed creature tottered stupidly on its trembling paws, stopping now and then as if glued to the grass, and mewing continually. Notch commented thus on the kitten’s movements:

“Very clever, you beast,” said a red-headed fellow.

The audience was looking at its artist with sated eyes.

“He’s mewing,” declared the youth, nodding in the direction of the kitten, and looked at his comrades. They watched the kitten in silence.

“Is he going to stay green the rest of his life?” asked the lad.